Magic, Myth, and Mysticism

By Cathy Eck

The Power of Magic and Myth

I’m sitting on my balcony watching the lunar eclipse as I write this post. It reminds me of stories that I read about how the ancient occult magicians acquired power over the people by using magic and myth. They often used eclipses as an incredible tool for their deception over the people. The people in power who played the masculine leader roles (associated with the sun), and were trained magicians, knew when the eclipses would occur. They were astronomers, as well as astrologers. They knew the patterns of the planets and stars; and they knew the stories that were connected to those patterns. This information was kept secret; so it could be used for power and control.

We must understand that the roots of all of our ancient, sacred texts came from human beings interpreting the stars for the purpose of crafting stories. Evolutionists notice a giant leap in thinking that they can’t explain, which occurred several thousand years ago; some say we were visited by aliens. Possible? However, it is my hypothesis that the leap was created when a human made up the first story. It gave us the ability to create like the Gods because what we create with our minds eventually becomes our experience (or reality).

The constellations were given names and became the Gods and Goddesses. Humans named them. As those constellations moved around, the myth makers created reasons for such movements through story. They created the next episode of the nightly soap opera. It most likely started as entertainment. Then it evolved into a tool of the wealthy and powerful. Thus, when we look back at old mythology and astrology, we find many versions of the popular stories as if they’re just new episodes in the life of a God and Goddess. The character traits and beliefs of these star characters are important and stay relatively constant; what those characters did really didn’t matter much at all. Those character constants were later labeled archetypes.

If we look closely into our mind, we find remnants of those archetypes in our thinking. Some are just plain true for us; they lightly alter our perspective to give it a uniqueness. Those are part of our True Self. But other beliefs and characteristics were learned from others, often because they wanted to mold us in their image and likeness. Or we chose those traits in order to fit in or to compete; those are false-self additions to our mind. They veil our True Self because we give them higher quality and importance than whatever we were born with — our True Self.

Astronomy and Astrology

Today, we consider astronomy and astrology to be two very different fields of interest; however, in ancient times, they were one discipline. So on the night of a lunar eclipse, the leader/magician (also called Lord, Pharaoh, Emperor, Priest, or King) would declare that he was going to make the moon disappear. People would come and watch, and sure enough the moon would start to slowly fade into the darkness of night. It looked like magic and power to those who didn’t know the secret. The magician would wait for awhile and allowed the fear of the followers to build, maybe even threatening to not bring the moon back while attaching a threat or a reason that gave him even more control and power. He might have said that the people were not obedient; or they had broken one of his ridiculous rules. Then when the tension was aroused to pre-orgasmic proportions, he would give in to the crowd of fearful people; and he’d tell them that he would bring the moon back. If he was clever in his timing, he said it just before the moon began to return to view. He probably declared that he was willing to give them one more chance. Or he might have told them to pray for its return and then answered the prayer building trust in him as their false God. These were tricks that caused the peoples’ minds to accept the beliefs that served the masculine role leaders.

This is the way that leaders have played with our minds for thousands of years. It’s important to see the pattern. First you have a threat that puts the blame on the people who play the feminine role. It’s always a false threat, but the people in the feminine doesn’t know that. They aren’t privy to the secret. If you’ve ever seen a parent tell a child something ridiculous like, “If you don’t obey me, I’ll kick you out of the house” because they did something that upset the parent but really wasn’t wrong, you’ve seen this pattern at work. The child is insanely confused because the punishment is so ridiculous compared to the supposed crime. In our earlier life as humans, we were told that we were sinners because of a story. The punishment was so out of proportion to the crime of eating the wrong apple. This was a set up so that we don’t ask for clarification or laws or deny our punishment. Secrets always destroy relationships on all levels. The child doesn’t realize that we won’t throw them out of the house. And the people in the church don’t realize they aren’t sinners. They will spend their lives looking for the sin within them that they will never find. And their own True Self will look like the sin because it is what exists inside of them.

When I mentor people, the most insane thing that I discover is that people hate their True Self. They fear freedom; and try hard to avoid it. This is especially true for people raised in religious households.

The holder of the secret doesn’t tell the secret because they feel strangely powerful in holding on to something that keeps the other person confused. Then after the fear builds to a frenzy and control is assured or a key belief is firmly implanted in the people’s minds, the person in the masculine role (said Lord) relieves the emotional tension with a fake solution. They still don’t tell the secret because they will definitely use it again. But they appear to fix the problem increasing their importance and level of power in the mind of their followers. For this very reason, we all love to feel important. In that moment, we feel like our false Gods.

Many people know and use this trick today. They play our emotions like they’re directing a symphony. Because we all come and go from this planet, we don’t remember that these are the games that are played. We fall for the trick because we enter the earth realm without realizing it has been taken over by an illusory parasite, which has most certainly afflicted our parents’ minds and will be passed on to us. We’re fully equipped to follow our True Self until we get confused by secrets perpetuated through magic, myth, and mysticism.

One can only imagine the relief when the magician agreed to bring the moon back, and suddenly the people started to watch it slowly reappear in the sky. All is going to be well with the world. Or so they think?

Our modern evangelists have been predicting that the lunar eclipse that I’m watching as I write this is prophetic of bad things to come. Of course — these were considered fortuitous or ominous events in the past; why would that change? Without the saving grace of the leader, it could have been the end of the world. That is what religion does. It creates a huge problem like the fear of going to hell; and then it sells us the solution if we give our souls to the priests. But the prophecies aren’t ever true; they’re simply one person’s distorted view of the illusion. That’s all folks! If we believe them, we become an actor in their play. We end up with nagging emotions in our body that we can’t explain or release. We trust the words of authority figures without ever using any discrimination again.

Their reasons are like those offered by conspiracy theorists. They fit within the pattern of one person or group creating fear and then later the same person or group relieving the fear, but they don’t solve anything. Even if their conspiracy theories are correct in reason, there is no chance that the leader will admit to them. But our minds play a horrible trick on us. We feel that we will be stuck in the illusion until the secret is revealed. This is just another play on the other popular trick perpetuated by religion and royalty; we’re told that we can’t free ourselves. We have to get into the favor of those in power to get free. That is a big lie that we all must let go. They can’t free us because they are up to their necks in illusion. You can’t give another what you don’t have or at least know exists. Freedom is our own personal choice; no one else can take if from us or grant it to us.

Freedom doesn’t require fixing those in power or fixing the effects of their shenanigans. It isn’t about getting their permission to leave the role we play in their illusion. It’s about removing the patterns they placed into our minds because we recognize they aren’t true; it’s about discriminating when we see or hear leaders at all levels using those patterns. We’re allowed to take joy in exposing them; although they won’t tell us that. They’ll tell us we hurt their feelings. The same people who treat others like shit are usually masters of the “poor me.”

In this way, we keep our true power; they don’t affect us in anyway when we don’t believe them or believe they have more power than our own True Self. As always, the problem is that when the false leader first said that he could make the moon disappear, we should have felt emotion. In fact, we probably did. But we listened to their words, and we believed them because they had authority. We created the giant psychological reversal that something that feels bad could be true. In that moment, we gave them power over our life. Our True Self was sent high into the sky and was relabeled as the judge of our behavior. We replaced our pure wisdom with shitty knowledge from a conniving leader.

And now, here we are, feeling alone, wondering what we should do with our lives; and all we seem to have available is knowledge and those who say they know the truth but don’t. When our True Self tries to get a word in or gives us some emotion or pain to wake us up and let go of what we’ve accepted from others, we don’t understand it or listen to it. It isn’t judging us; it’s trying to get us to discriminate. It’s trying to remind us to remember who we are — it screams at us to forget who others think we should be. If we don’t listen, we become part of the problem; and then if someone does tell us to listen within, we call them heretics or traitors. We’re taught it’s dangerous to ignore authority. Our fears keep us stuck. Enlightenment is seeing the error; freedom is no longer believing it.

The Moon Metaphor

In a metaphoric sense, the moon represented the reflective aspect of the feminine role. The feminine had two main aspects. It could reflect like the moon, but then it was nothing without the sun. Or it could absorb like the earth and create life — the wisdom to do so was within the feminine. The sun enhanced the earth and made life possible; but it could not produce life alone. The sun/earth connection was a metaphor for the true creative connection. It was the metaphor for the perfect masculine/feminine relationship.

To make the moon disappear was a very relevant and powerful trick for a bunch of men who wanted to create an illusion of a patriarchal society based on a male only God. Those who believe in that society and that false God are those who knowingly or unknowingly destroy the earth and the people who are feminine to them today. Like the false leaders before them, they hold within their mind one of the many secrets that we can let people in the feminine role know their inferior place. They work for the illusion; and they teach us that we have no power over those in the masculine role. And my role is to say they are full of shit. They have no power; they have to lie and keep secrets to make their knowledge worth anything at all.

Even today, we don’t see their lies. The one in power truly has no power at all. They have knowledge that they pretend is wisdom. They lie. Wisdom has true power; but we have been conned to believe that knowledge has power. Knowledge only has the power we give it. Without believers; it is just a bunch of lies. This was the meaning of the fall in Eden. They ate from the Tree of Knowledge instead of the Tree of Life. And they were told that they could now think like the Gods. They wanted to be like the false Gods; and we still do too. Why? They are a fucking mess.

Look at our medical system. Wisdom would find the cause and eliminate all disease. Knowledge spends endless time and money seeking a cure that they never find. Look at our governments. Wisdom would let go and bring peace back to earth. Knowledge looks for the next war to fight; it keeps that standing Army ready and holds secrets as power. What a crock of shit. Then there is our educational system that teaches children what to think rather than supports them in how to think within a giant illusion.

When given the opportunity to eat from the Tree of Life, we still choose knowledge because we’ve forgotten how wonderful wisdom can be. We can’t hold all of the world’s knowledge in our mind; knowledge divides us. So someone who repairs toilets looks like a magician to me only because I don’t know how to do it. When I designed computer systems, I looked like a magician to people who couldn’t do it. But I used knowledge; and I knew that. On the other hand, the act of letting go of knowledge gets us to wisdom, which we all share. Since we all have wisdom, there is no deception when we think at that level; there is simply harmony.

We can still use knowledge but not for power. Our knowledge must be submissive to our wisdom. Before my True Self took the lead, I designed computer systems to make money. There was no compassion in them. After my True Self took over, I designed unique, money-saving systems that were creative, revolutionary, and win-win for everyone. My knowledge (false self) was now servant to my True Self. When we all live this way, there is no chance of false power taking over our lives or harming our earth.

Moon Stories

Once we understand this simple truth, it’s easy to imagine different myths and stories that might have been attached to a disappearing moon. As time went on, stories changed. Prophets, who were usually astrologers, created the stories and the drama. Drama isn’t true so it comes with emotion. Fear is the emotion of choice for those who want power. Guilt and shame are also powerful tools. Eventually, other people try to create remedies to keep the prophets’ predictions from happening or to repair the effects of the illusion. This created superstitions, lucky charms, ceremonies, and even horrific things like sacrifice. It created false physical remedies that we labeled cures, but they didn’t cure a damn thing. Why?

Life, when we are stuck in the illusion, becomes about getting rid of our fears (emotions); and all of those emotions have been planted by someone who either created the belief that generated the emotion for their own benefit or is perpetuating the belief (often innocently) because they benefit from the repair or cure of it. If we let go of our role in the illusion without fear of losing our control, security, or our approval, we find the joy that is waiting for us beyond the fear. We give power too easily to those who take away our emotions; even if they were the very ones that created them. We take that power back when we let go of the belief that created the emotions. We do that when we see a belief as a belief, not the truth.

It’s difficult for people even today, in a world where science can explain just about anything, to look at a natural event like an eclipse and not attach some ridiculous meaning to it. Or we take our knowledge and explain it and label it. This need to reason and express knowledge, established a long, long time ago, turned us into machines that look for meaning everywhere. Once we think about something we no longer experience it. We’ve moved from wisdom, creativity, and enjoyment to knowledge, looking for understanding, and ultimately suffering. If we can take the voices of knowledge and reason and force them to submit to the true wisdom within, we will stop looking for reasons because we’ll know.

The way I teach people to reach freedom is the art of letting go. We must see the voice that generates the fear within our mind as a human voice; and for that reason alone, it’s false. We let it go and when it disappears, we create a vacuum whereby our True Self can come out of the heavens and back into our bodies as truth, wisdom, and discrimination (no longer needs to judge). If we do this enough, we see all the false archetypes and stories disappear. Our minds become quiet, calm, and wise.

We realize we don’t need the knowledge of the astrologer or astronomer for anything other than entertainment. At the core, we’re all actors entertaining each other because it’s fun. We come here to play; and we lose that when childhood ends.

Only after letting go, when they tell us to look up because something cool is happening in the sky, will we do so without analyzing what we are doing. We’ll experience it with naked minds where it means nothing; it is an example of the perfection that is all around us and within us. We feel the connection that knowledge can never provide; and it was within us all the time. No one can con us again because we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The ancient wisdom keepers lived their lives based on the law of cause and effect. They never fixed a problem because a problem is an effect of a mental cause. Today, we call the mental causes beliefs.

In modern times we've become so good at projecting and suppressing our beliefs that we hide the causal beliefs even from ourselves.

We often confuse our beliefs or opinions with the truth. This causes our problems to become chronic or permanent.

If our mind believes something is true, it won't let it go. We first have to discriminate between true and false (beliefs). Then we can let the beliefs go. What remains is the truth.